A baby elephant is basically the opposite thing of a great white shark. Unsteady and shuffling, small and pink, she begs for milk and whiffles her tiny trunk from beneath the safety of her mother’s towering legs. The cover for HOW TO BE AN ELEPHANT was challenging to create, bec

Holding your book for the first time is a little like meeting your newborn baby. After investing weeks or months (or even years) of work and worry, your heart is skipping about with joy. Look at you, amazing little thing that I made! You’re finally here! I wish my ears were big

Last week, I had the privilege of speaking to nearly 1,000 students about great white sharks and the process of making books. As always, I had a blast—school and library visits are among my favorite things—and as always, the students were armed and ready with an endless supply of exce

It’s been exactly one year since my last blog post. In the past 365 days, a lot has changed. For one, we’ve moved out of a one-bedroom, walk-up apartment in New York City and into a three-bedroom, two-bath house in a small town in Oregon. For another, our infant son is now a toddler,

Give birth to child. Check. Host family visits. Check. Next up: Finally finish How To Be An Elephant! I’m not exactly sure what my new life as an author-mom looks like, other than that there’s a lot more baby in it than before. A baby—with its around-the-clock needs as it

The past few months have been full of many things: writing a manuscript, drawing a book, attending my first library conference, and—last but not least—getting ready for a baby! My son is due to arrive any day now, forever changing the lives of my husband and I in ways that we can̵

When I was in high school, dreaming of being an illustrator, and even while at RISD on my way to that goal, I really had no idea how many drafts it could take to get a drawing right. A couple of thumbnails, a color sketch, and WHAM BAM KABLAM, make the final art, right? Finger paintin